


I've never listened to a single episode of TMA

by nelyonelyo



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:34:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27593519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nelyonelyo/pseuds/nelyonelyo
Summary: As the title says, I've never listened to a single episode of TMA. I have no clue what it's about or how anyone acts. I don't even read the wiki pages. I just absorb my own ideas from the secondhand fanart I see.And that is NOT going to stop me from writing fic for it.
Comments: 21
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

It was a lonely, cold, and uncomfortably wet day at the good ol’ Magnus Archives. I take that back. This is London, I think, so, comparatively, this is a slightly above average day on account that the sun was visible for a few seconds.

Jon occupied himself by clicking and dragging pixelated cards across his screen. His old, bulky desktop whirred loudly. The fan air smelled like worms. Elias _refused_ to replace this hardware. _It’s the most secure,_ he would tell the office. _It’s the most effective platform to run Windows 2000 on!_ This was all bullshit. Despite Elias’s occult wisdom, he did say a lot of bullshit.

Jon boredly opened Microsoft Excel. “Fuck it,” he said. “Excel time.”

A mildly anthropomorphic paperclip popped up on screen, along with a small dialogue box. “Hi! It looks like you’re trying to waste half a day drawing smiley faces in Excel again! Can I help?”

“Oh, clippy.” Jon sighed under his breath in an accent so British it could un-sweet and re-heat you McDonalds sweet tea. “You’re the only motherfucker in this town that understands me.”

Martin slammed a pile of blank wide-ruled notebook paper on the desk. “Hi Jonnnnnnnnn,” he said. He attempted a slight hairflip but, on account of him having relatively short hair, only managed to pull off a half-hearted scalp scratch. “Dropping off these archive documents for you!”

“This is blank notebook paper.”

“Oh! Haha! Silly me! So it is! You’re so smart Jon.”

Jon didn’t loop up from his blank Excel document. “Do you like, need something, ooooor….”

“Haha noooo, but I mean! I’m here anyways! Want to talk about your day cause I sure do?”

“I really don’t. Go bother someone else.”

“Should I leave the papers or-“

“Martin I literally do not give a single shit. I’m busy archiving right now.”

Martin slapped the top of the massive desktop computer. “This baby can fit so much archive in it.”

Jon slammed his forehead down onto the keyboard in annoyance.

“Okay, okay, I’ll leave. Fine. Be that way! I was gonna bring you earl grey tea if you were a good boy today. New special method! It’s just microwaved Gatorade now!”

Jon moaned into the keyboard. It was, to clarify, an annoyance moan, not a pleasure moan. Jon does _not_ fuck. At least not now.

“Also,” Martin continued. “There’s a person in the lobby waiting to be archived.”

“Send them in.”

“Nice use of singular they/them pronouns rather than assuming this unknown person is male! We love an archivist who fights sexist stereotypes in the workplace <3” Martin left the room. Jon, meanwhile, was left wondering how Martin made the “<3” emoticon with his mouth. Probably some entity bullshit or something. Must make note of that.

He took out a pen and wrote on one of the notebook sheets, “Martin can say “<3” with his mouth. Probably some entity bullshit or something.” Looking at the paper, he nodded. This is a sufficient archival note. Content, he signed it “Jon Sims,” in a stupid little gay way with a heart over the “i” and everything.

By the time he finished detailing this note, the person-in-the-lobby walked in. They were tall and blond. They looked like if Lestat got stuck in an 80s synthpop club for ten years and started merging with the disco balls, smoke machines, laser setups, and bowling alley carpet type décor.

“Hello! Martin said you’d like to be Archived? I don’t really know what you mean by that…”

“Elias told me you’re the archivist, what do you mean you don’t know?”

“Oh. You know….”

“It seems like you don’t actually.”

Jon forcefully cleared his throat. “Anyways. He also said you use they/them pronouns. Is this true, or should I gender you?”

“Oh, I dropped my gender in a garbage disposal a while ago, actually.”

“Ah. Iconic.”

“I use “it” pronouns, thanks.”

Jon took out a tape recorder and pressed play. Always Elias with these stupid old pieces of technology. Whatever. Jon learned to cope with it. “Name, please?” he asked this stranger.

“Michael Distortion!”

“Is that like, your DJ name, or is that your legal name?”

“Kind of fucked up and transphobic to ask someone their legal name tbh. If I give you a name, that’s my name.”

“Ah fuck ah shit my bad. Are you trans?” Jon asked.

“I literally do not know anymore. I’m just Michael Distortion, okay?”

“Fucking mood! Anyways! Moving on! What have you come here to-“

Michael took its hand out of its pocket. Like one of those snake-in-a-can gag gifts, his hand expanded in size until it was about three feet long, knocking over Jon’s paper pile in the process.

“Oh my god,” Jon said.

“Shit, man, I’m sorry!” Michael said. It stood up and, with both hands massive, began trying to pick up the papers. “Oh fuck.” It only managed to sort of smear them across and scatter them across the floor. “Oh fuck, dude, I’m making it worse. Awwww mannn this is _worse_ now.” Despite making it worse, Michael didn’t think to stop.

Jon slammed his head on the keyboard again and opted to simply ignore this mess rather than deal with it.

After an agonizing ten minutes, the office was coated in loose paper. Michael sat back in the chair, put its hands away, and grinned. Just like its hands, its grin also expanded way beyond normal. It took a hand out to cover his mouth, which stirred up the papers _again_ and…

“Stop! Enough!” Jon shouted. This might have been intimidating, but Jon is like 5’2 and nerd and _British_ , so it came across with the same forcefulness levels as one of those videos of tiny round frogs making squeaking noises in the rain. “Just tell me what you want to archive! All of this is being recorded and do you _know_ how expensive and hard to find tape-recorder supplies are? We don’t even have RadioShacks anymore! It’s impossible!”

“I’m sorry, homie.” Michael said.

“Are you here to file a report about your hands?”

“No? Why would you ask that?”

Jon shrugged. “They look kinda supernatural to me?”

“Kinda rude of you to make assumptions.”

“You’re right,” he sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. I should be more professional. You can start, then. What is it that you’d like to talk about?”

“I’m just tryna vibe, to be honest”

“…then…why are you here?”

“To vibe! I just said that!”

“I’m a _very_ busy man, Michael,’’ Jon said sternly. “And I’m afraid that I do not “vibe,” either.”

Michael started crying. Like its hands and mouth, its tears warped wildly out of shape, beyond normal geometry and expectation. They seemed like glops of molten sugar, but in a wildly unappetizing way, in the same way a tenth plate of mediocre buffet pizza looks when you’re stuffed from the first nine plates. It picked up.

“Archivist note: fucked up tears,” Jon whispered into the tape recorder.

“You’re not going to help me, are you?” Michael asked.

“There’s papers on the floor if you want to wipe your tears.”

“My hands are too fucked up to pick up the papers right now!”

“Ah. I see.”

“Can you wipe them for me?”

Jon grimaced.

“Is that a no?” Michael didn’t wait for a response but, rather, stood up and pushed the chair in. “That’s alright. No one cares about me much anyways. I don’t see why you’d find any love in your heart for me, when you can’t even find enough love for Martin right now.”

“How do you know about me and Martin?”

“He told me in the lobby.”

“Ah.”

Michael pointed his fingers at Jon in form of finger guns, flashed a smile, collapsed into a multi-colored swarm of spirals and geometric fragments, and vanished.

Jon picked up the tape recorder and spoke into it again. “That concludes my session with Michael Distortion. It is 10:15 am, March 10th, two thousand, uh….” He couldn’t remember the year. “2021?” Yes, that seemed good enough.


	2. Chapter 2

Jon dipped his 20 pence bread roll into a cup of lukewarm pey wet. If you’re a loser who doesn’t know what pey wet is, it’s the water skimmed off a vat of Britishly cooked peas. Duh.

“Hmm,” he said out loud to himself. Unsatisfied, he tried again: “ _hmm_.” That’s better. Far more British. He often had to practice his accent during lunch break.

The institute was full of liars. Martin lied on his resume. Tim lied when he denied stealing a slice from Elias’s birthday cake before the party. Elias lied about being a cat person. And Jon? Well, Jon was actually born and raised in Tennessee. He took a plane flight to England for his 13th birthday, but his unnamed parental guardian unit didn’t bother to buy him a plane ticket back, so he simply accepts his fate and converted to being British. By now, he had _almost_ mastered faking his British accent, but he still had to warm it up and refresh himself now and then.

“Right, what’s all this then?” Jon said to the wall in front of him, trying his accent out again. Flawless execution, this time! 10/10.

He returned to enjoying his pey wet.

His phone went off, blasting “Toxic” by Britney Spears. He sighed. Elias mandated that everyone set that song as a custom ringtone for his calls. Jon liked the song just fine, but hearing the first `15 seconds of it over and over again drove him to hate it. He sighed again, doing one last check on his accent, and picked it up.

“Ello, Elias!” he said cheerily.

Elias didn’t speak, but Jon could hear a fat fucking bong rip over the phone.

Elias then hung up.

Jon rolled his eyes (just the two normal ones this time). Elias did this _all the time_. And for what! Just to piss him off! Just to do a gay little bong rip that pisses off the archivists??

Barely a minute later, Elias slammed the office door open. “Jon!” he yelled. “I’ve got a new case for you to investigate. Hannibal Buress.”

“The…comedian from the Eric Andre show? Is he an avatar of the spiral or something?”

“No, no, not the comedian. The therapist.”

“Oh, Hannibal Lecter, the psychiatrist?”

“Yes yes, that’s what I said. He’s an avatar of the Flesh! He’s a _cannibal_.”

“Mr. Bouchard, are you referring to Hannibal Lecter, the _fictional_ character from the American psychological horror-thriller television series developed by Bryan Fuller for NBC-“

“He’s not fucking fictional, Jon. God. You idiot. You’ve encountered lotion-salesman clowns and countless worm creatures and shit, and you won’t even accept something as basic as cannibalism? You dumb little archivist why do we pay you! Fuck! Jon, Hannibal is _real_ and he comes into my house _every night_ and smokes all my weed.”

Jon took out a pad of paper and began furiously scribbling on it. “So does he eat people or smoke weed? Which is it?”

“Both. And I want you to get a statement from him.”

“Where can I find him?”

“That’s your job! Not mine!” Elias left the room and slammed the door in a manner reminiscent of a theatre kid who got an understudy role and wants the director to promote him. No one will ever promote Elias Bouchard, though, alas.

Jon looked down at his paper. He had no intent on investigating a fictional character. Instead, he had drawn a silly little caricature of Elias’s angry face. Tee hee. He took out his phone, snapped a photo of it, and sent it in the group chat labeled “besties who tried to kill me once <3.”

His phone beeped almost immediately. Daisy had responded. “Poggers,” she typed out into the chat. The phone beeped again, showing a picture of a really edgy, slightly erotic, fursona. It was some sort of dog-wolf-fox, who can tell these days with fursonas. “Check out my new commission!”

Jon sent a singular thumbs up emoji in response.

Daisy sent another text. “Paid for it with Elias’s credit card LMAO”

Jon sent another thumbs up emoji, then put his phone away in his desk drawer. No more distractions. Only focusing on important subjects.

He opened solitaire for the fiftieth time today and started a new game. He smiled to himself. Life as an archivist is pretty nice these days.


	3. Fanart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My good friend David (https://daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaavid.tumblr.com/) drew fanart of this fic, and y'all need to see this <3


	4. Chapter 4

This day had been going on forever. Jon had already been forced to deal with Martin, Elias, and this Michael fellow. What could possibly be next!

Best bet is to shut down his little office for the day and pretend he’s not there, yes.

Jon got up, locked his door, and turned off the lights. He returned to his desk, put his feet up on it, and leaned back, enjoying both the silence and the dark. No one bothering him.

“Archivist note,” he said out loud, not bothering to find the tape recorder. “This fucks.”

The moment he closed his eyes, he heard a loud _thonk_ noise. He whipped out his phone flashlight and shined it at the ground. Someone had dropped a thick book on the ground, specifically, a copy of _Twilight: New Moon._ A few seconds later, another book fell from above. Anne Rice’s _Interview with the Vampire._ Jon raised the beam of his phone flashlight, illuminating what appeared to be a corpse hanging, bat-like, upside down from the ceiling.

“Oh. Great. A Dracula,” he said. He then immediately picked up a broom and began swatting at the form. “Go on, shoo!”

Just as the books had fallen, this figure also dropped to the ground. Instead of a _thonk_ noise, there was a muttering of profanities, muffled under a thick British accent and layers of young adult angst.

“Archivist note, _not_ a corpse,” Jon said, flipping the light on. In front of him as a very stereotypically gothic-looking young man. Jon, being a man of culture, immediately compared him in his mind to Richmond, the token goth character from hit British TV series, _The IT Crowd_. He also reminded him of…

The figure pouted.

“Gerard Way?” Jon wondered out loud.

“How did you know my name!” he said, standing up and dusting himself off.

“Fuck, _you’re_ Gerard Way?? Shit,” Jon said, in awe. “I own all your albums. I have to say, your hair is much longer than it looks in your music videos.”

“Sorry, not Gerard Way. I misheard you. I’m Gerard _Keay_.”

“That’s going to confuse people. There can’t be _two_ Gerard -ay people.”

“Well yeah, I chose that name on purpose, ha.”

Jon pointed to the books. “Are these for me?”

“No. I carry those everywhere. They’re like, my _soul_ to me, man! My life! They’re magic!”

Jon shook his head. “Weird. Don’t like that. And why were you hanging from my office ceiling?”

“Pretending to be a bat.”

“I saw. But why.”

Gerard shrugged. “Goth shit.”

“Understandable, have a nice day.” Jon returned to his desk, put his feet up, and took a sleeping mask out of his desk drawer. It was hot pink and had two very large googly eyes over it.

“Mr. Sims!” Gerard whined. “Don’t fall asleep! I ubered all the way here to talk to you!”

“Why?” Jon asked curtly, not bothering to take his mask off.

“Dr. Bouchard sent my mommy an email saying-“

Jon sat up but didn’t take the mask off. “Stop. There’s a lot to unpack there. Why do you still call your mother “mommy”? And Elias Bouchard does _not_ have a doctorate.”

“Well, mommy asked him about the doctorate. He said he took it from his husband in the divorce.”

“That’s _absolutely_ not how divorces and doctorates work.” Jon hesitated for a second. _Was_ that how they worked in England? And since when was Elias divorced? Who the fuck could have married him? “And please stop calling your mother mommy. It makes me uncomfortable.”

“Can _you_ take off the sleep mask! It’s making _me_ uncomfortable!” Gerard demanded.

“No. I can see through it just fine.”

“Is it translucent or something?”

“No, I’m just a special boy.”

“Ah.”

The two stared at each other in silence for a few moments.

Jon’s phone went off, blasting a low audio quality rendition of “Disorder” by Joy Division.

Gerard immediately perked up, sitting forward in his chair and smiling. “The _Unknown Pleasures_ album! You’ve listened to it, for real! I love that song!” He got out of his chair and began doing that slow goth dance where you sway around and put your arms above your head.

Jon stared at him in shock.

A second or two later, the phone ringer stopped. Gerard sat back down.

“That was CVS pharmacy,” Jon said monotonously, looking at the screen though his mask. “I should probably stop by this afternoon and pick up my Zoloft.”

“I’m on Prozac,” Gerard said. “No wonder Dr. Bouchard thought we’d be friends! We’re both depressed goths!”

“Oh, I am _not_ a depressed goth,” Jon insisted, almost offended. “I’m Jon Sims, archivist.”

Gerard narrowed his eyes at him. “Fine. That may be true, for now. I’ll come back soon.” He gathered his books and left.


End file.
